Pocket Full of Dreams: Home Sweet Home

Well, it's been a while (slight under-exaggeration) since we've blogged - very, very slack, I know! I hope you've not deserted us and are still keen to hear from us :)

Since the departure from Bellingen, I towed the van to Newcastle .. and that's pretty much where we've stayed. It was quite an experience driving the van for such a long drive.. exhausting to say the least. A great experience nonetheless. Aaron's hand is so much better - he is now only weeks away from working again, which he's very excited about.

So a brief rundown of our last 6-7 weeks. We arrived into Newcastle and were fortunate enough to be able to stay with Aaron's Godparents for a few days before we were able to get into a caravan park. Being peak season and school holidays, we were finding it really hard to find somewhere to stay. We finally found somewhere that would help us out and we ended up in Belmont at Spinnakers Tourist Park - complete with 2 pools and a little gym. It was a lovely place and super handy to everything - Aaron was able to walk up to the shops and over to Lake Macquarie. I started looking for a bit of temp work, to bring in some money. I got a few jobs, which was great to get out of the van and into the workforce again - my eyes and shoulders definitely didn't think so though! We have done a few touristy things - like Australia Day down in Newcastle - we bought a duck for the Ducks for Dollars race, which I've seen for years on TV.. so was quite excited to be able to see if for myself. We didn't have much of a chance of winning - there were 7000 ducks!! I'm pretty sure ours was one of the ones that snuck out the back and didn't end up racing.. hehe. I got ridiculously sunburnt - one of those glow in the dark type sunburns.. ouch. We did the walk up to the lighthouse and around the Newcastle foreshore.. lovely.

Fast forward a few weeks and we were meeting up with some good friends of Aaron's - Steve and Vicki. They own a house in Charlestown (conveniently located just a 2 minutes drive from a Robina Town Centre type shopping centre.. ) and were looking to rent it out... with Aaron being super comfortable here, having grown up here, and me falling more and more in love with the area everyday, we thought the only option was to rent the house and stay here for a while and earn some money and do some trips from here. There are sooooo many options for trips away from here - so we've got a lot planned already. It took us a few weeks to get into the house, as Steve and Vicki were doing a bit of work on the place and their son was still moving out. So Aaron started helping out a few days a week to work his hand at his own pace and to keep his days busy - so he didn't get cabin fever. There's still a bit of work to do, but I think Aaron's really happy that he'll have a few projects to do at his leisure - and it will give Steve and Vicki a chance to have a rest on the weekends. They live on a vineyard about an hour and a bit away, so I can only imagine how they'd be feeling every Friday night after a week of work, to have to come down and work on the house for the weekend.

Aaron's showed me a few new surf spots - one complete with a nudie beach.. as you can imagine I was a bit shocked when we first arrived - Aaron didn't even tell me where we were going!!! Me being me, couldn't stop looking, I was mesmerised! And I don't mean in a sketchy way. There were "situations" that had me a bit perplexed.. like a couple walking on the beach - full hats, zinc and shirts on, then no pants - letting everything hang free.. umm, I don't get it. Nudies aside, it was a beautiful spot and there were plenty of peaks to surf .. the water was very fresh - and so much heavier than the Coast. It definitely felt more sharky. And speaking of sharky, I was surfing on the same day as that Newcastle local was taken by the shark at Redhead - surfing a beach about 2km away... scary stuff! Hasn't stopped me though :)

As we were starting to think about moving into the house, we realised we had no furniture. Steve and Vicki were going to throw out the sofa, fridge, washing machine & dryer - so we were able to keep those, which has saved us lots of $$. We got to thinking that we didn't really want to spend a lot on furniture, in case we didn't end up staying longterm... and as we were talking about this, we started noticing a lot of "hard rubbish" (of bulk rubbish, as they call it down here) on the sides of the road... how convenient! So we took a drive around the suburbs and started picking up bits and pieces ... and in the meantime, became ridiculously addicted to "scabbing" as we eloquently started calling it! We have scored some of the most amazing pieces and pieces that you would pay a fortune for in shops.. so as you can imagine, we are so happy with how the house is coming together. It's amazing what people throw away... we have a few favourite pieces, one of which is a round, bevelled edge gold mirror (not a silver mirror like the majority of mirrors) and it's stamped from 1949!!! Score!!

Here's a few piccies of our picks so far... and a few other things... just to keep you in the loop on our travels :)

The sunrise this morning.. we got a super early start for our 'scabbing'

Table picked (funnily enough from one of Aaron's old schoolmate's houses...we didn't even know!) Chairs from ebay

Cool retro cabinet thingo..

Old wooden crate and an umpire's board (not sure which sport)

Close up of the umpire's board .. so cool~!

This is a tin car we found.. minus one wheel - I think we'll respray and then find some old-school wheels for it

I've already started to paint the lamp base (left) - going to find a cool shade for it, and it will move to the studio

Aaron's temporary table - from an old door.. this will be our dining table until he finishes the other one.. a bigger door - it's going to be AMAZING! We'll spray the chair white and sand them back a bit

Details of table... complete with keyhole and lock

Our gold mirror.. so cool!! With a sneaky view of our kitchen

One of the ladders we found..

Cool retro chairs Aaron found

We found 2 of these - bedside tables.. complete with stickers of the original builders of the drawers.. very cool! And only a wipe over needed.. even better!

This was our load this morning.. we needed to change cars and go back for round 2!!

3 of the 4 suitcases I found.. I have one more that is a bit of a pink colour

The cabinet we ended up finding late last night .. and went back for this morning, cause it didn't fit in the car and we didn't have rope.. in really good condition - very similar to the bedside tables